Half of the Atlantic 10 men's basketball coaches oppose 18-game schedule
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With the Atlantic Coast Conference and the Colonial Athletic Association already playing 18-game conference schedules and the Big East heading to 18 next year, Atlantic 10 Commissioner Bernadette McGlade told the Richmond Times Dispatch last week that the A-10 is considering doing the same by adding two more league contests.
That will be discussed at the Atlantic 10's May meetings.
If the change is adopted, 23 games played by the University of Massachusetts would be determined automatically. In addition to conference games, the Minutemen would play four games against Mid-American Conference teams that were contractually agreed on when UMass joined that league for football, as well as the annual contest against Boston College.
That would leave just seven nonconference games to schedule. One of those could be an exempted tournament, allowing a school to play between two and four contests that only count once against the limit.
UMass coach Derek Kellogg said Monday he has not studied the potential change.
"I'm not really certain without looking at it a little bit more whether that would be good or bad," Kellogg said. "Depending on who your mirror games are and what opportunities we're afforded for television, there are a few questions ... We'd have 22 games locked in (including the MAC games). We'd have to be very careful how we scheduled out of conference."
Any change in scheduling would be determined by either the league's athletic directors or presidents, but a straw poll of the league's coaches on Monday's media conference call had four in favor of 18 games and seven against it. Like Kellogg, Saint Joseph's coach Phil Martelli said he is undecided. Rhode Island coach Jim Baron did not participate in the call.
The coaches' answers and the reasons behind those answers highlighted some of the league's most fundamental challenges - the league has 14 schools, whose resources and needs, challenges and goals are often very different. It's not easy to create a fair system in a league that features public and Catholic schools of widely varying enrollments with some programs in cities and some in college towns. On top of that the budgets of the different programs vary considerably.
Opponents of 18 games point to it limiting the opportunity for nationally televised nonconference games as well as other regional rivalry games. There are financial factors too. For schools which draw big crowds regardless of the opponent, two more league games could cost them a lucrative home contests. For schools that receive guarantees, it's a loss of one or two potential paydays.
"I'm not a fan of the 18-game schedule. I've been a part of a few in the Pac 12 and the Big 10," first-year Dayton coach Archie Miller said. "In our conference each individual program needs to schedule nonconferencely maybe a little bit differently.
"In our program we want to give ourselves the opportunity for great home-and-home series on national television," he added. "When you play 18 (league games) that really limits your scheduling philosophy."
Temple coach Fran Dunphy agreed.
"I haven't given it a lot of thought, but 16 had been an ideal number for all of us," Dunphy said. "We've been then able to step away for out-of-conference games and expand our reach for where you can go and areas you can recruit in. I like 16 games, but I'm willing to listen to 18 if that's where the league thinks we should go."
Fordham coach Tom Pecora said he preferred 16 games, but is willing to do whatever is best for the league. He said the extra two nonconference games give him a chance to schedule two contests his program is more likely to win.
"We don't have any trouble getting nonconference games," Pecora said. "I understand there are teams in this conference where getting nonconference games becomes very difficult. The unbalanced conference schedule that every conference is dealing with now is a bit of an albatross. ... For us, 16 is perfect and as we're building this I can get two opponents that are much more winnable than A-10 games."
Even without taking a position, Martelli is concerned that starting the league season earlier would mean more games when students are home on Christmas break
"I do worry about atmosphere," Martelli said. "If we were to play two league games before Christmas or between Christmas and New Year's when a lot of our schools depend on students to create atmosphere, are we playing our games in a void? But at the end of the day if someone said the best way for us to get more of our teams' names called on Selection Sunday, count me in."
Advocates for playing more league games contend it would create a better and fairer determination of who the best teams are in the league because more teams would play each other home and home.
"I've always felt that our biggest problem league-wide is the inequitable scheduling," Duquesne coach Ron Everhart said. "Of course there's no way to have an equitable schedule with the number of teams we have. I've always been a proponent of playing more league games."
St. Bonaventure coach Mark Schmidt's program is hampered by economics and geography. He's not in position to offer many guarantee checks to opponents and getting any team, especially good ones, to come to a place as remote as Olean, N.Y., is a challenge.
"It's really difficult for us to get home games," Schmidt said. "We can't buy games and where we're located it's really hard for us to get teams to come here. So adding two games within the schedule would really, really help us."
The fact that the ACC, CAA and Big East have expanded to 18 games could be a factor too. Those three leagues occupy a similar geographic footprint as the Atlantic 10 and most A-10 teams play at least one or multiple games from those leagues. If they have fewer available slots, the A-10 programs may have to look further geographically to find nonconference games.
Richmond coach Chris Mooney said in a perfect world he'd rather stay at 16, but other leagues moving to 18 might force the Atlantic 10 to do the same.
"Ideally if nothing else was changing around the country, I'd prefer 16 games because it would give us the opportunity to schedule two more games possibly against high major programs," he said. "But the big wrench is that so many of those leagues might be at 18 games and might not be available to play anyway. In a bubble I'd say 16, but if everybody is going to 18 we need to sit down and talk about it."
Game of the Week: St. Mary's at Murray State, Saturday, 6 p.m. (ESPN3) - This game is the gem of the annual Bracketbusters event. The Racers went from chasing a perfect regular season to trying to stay on the right side of the bubble. St. Mary's is far better than any team they'll face in the Ohio Valley Conference.
Toughest slate: New Mexico - The Mountain West Conference has a three-way tie for first place at 6-2. New Mexico is one of those three and it plays the other two - UNLV and San Diego State, both of whom are ranked. The Lobos are at the Aztecs at 10:15 p.m. Wednesday, and host the Rebels at 1 p.m. Saturday. New Mexico lost its previous games to both of these teams.
Atlantic 10 Game of the week: Dayton at Xavier, Saturday, 8 p.m. (CBS Sports Network) - If it's not the league's biggest rivalry, it's close, and the NCAA resumes of both teams could use a boost.
CALIPARI TURNS 53, OR DOES HE? - Former Minuteman coach John Calipari poked fun at his previous programs' NCAA infractions when he was asked about turning 53 last week.
"Two years got vacated so I'm 51," Calipari told the Associated Press on Friday.
Matt Vautour can be reached at mvautour@gazettenet.com. Follow UMass coverage on Twitter at twitter.com/GazetteUMass. Get UMass coverage delivered in your Facebook news feed at http://www.facebook.com/GazetteUMassCoverage.
